Where There's a Will, There's a Way

I challenge you to find a more awkward situation than sitting in an attorney’s office, surrounded by the grieving friends and family members of your ex-girlfriend, as you wait for them to read her will.

I handed a tissue to her sniffling sister in the chair next to mine. We had never met but I recognized her from pictures. She took it without a word, her red-rimmed eyes telling me that I don’t belong here. What was I doing here?

I never asked to be in Laura’s will. In fact, up until 48 hours ago when they finally succeeded in contacting me, I never even knew I was in it. I never knew she had one. People our age have wills? Am I supposed to have a will? Did she mean for me to still be in it? Or had she just not gotten around to updating it?

Her friend Zara came over to me. I stood and offered her my chair but she shook her head no. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said sincerely.

“Our loss,” Zara corrected me, patting my arm. “The world’s loss.”

I still hadn’t been able to process it. My clumsy Laura. My brilliant Laura. Gone. Poof. In reality, she had been gone for me for months, refusing to answer my calls or return my texts. She had never given me a real reason for the break-up.

“We have had our perfect six months and now we are done. Cherish what we had. It was perfect. Remember that. Remember me like that.”

“Why stop at six months?” I countered. “It could be a perfect year. It could be a perfect forever.”

She had been adamant. We were over. She never told me she had terminal cancer.

The attorney cleared her throat and began the formal reading of the will. Laura left me $20,000 and a business card from Amoretto’s, the place where I had first taken her to dinner. On the back she had written “Ask for Jared.”

I smiled for the first time in days. Laura loved elaborate treasure hunts.

I showed up to the restaurant at 5 PM, right as they were opening. There was only one other couple in the place. “Is Jared here?” I asked the host, showing her the card.

“Oh,” she replied, putting her hands over her heart and giving me a sad smile. Obviously, she knew what was going on and had expected me. “I’ll go get him.”

She returned a minute later with a large chef in a spotless white apron. “Hello,” I said, uncertainly.

The chef just nodded. “Where did they take the man who was hurt playing peek-a-boo?” he asked me.

“To the I.C.U.” I replied. It was the first joke that Laura had ever told me. I had groaned when she told it to me, but it had always made her laugh.

“That’s right. Here,” he handed me an envelope and then walked away.

Inside was a little card and there, written in Laura’s handwriting were the words, “I saw you, but you didn’t see me. Go back to where it all began.”

That was easy. I knew the exact spot she was referring to. I had been barreling down the sidewalk like most of the workers on their lunchbreak in the city when the woman in front of me had stopped abruptly. Unable to stop in time I had plowed into her and knocked her to the ground.

“I’m so sorry,” I started to apologize, but she held a finger up to her lips to shoosh me. Without a word and ignoring my outstretched hand she reached into her bag, while still sprawled on the sidewalk, and pulled out a pen and a little black notebook. She opened to one of the last pages and began writing furiously. Finally, she closed the book, slid the elastic band around it and looked up at me.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’ve already forgotten that idea once. I didn’t want to lose it a second time.”

I was hooked immediately. “I’m sorry for knocking you over. Can I buy you a coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee,” she responded.

“How about a band-aid,” I asked, noticing the scrape on her knee. “It’s the least I could do.”

She nodded and accepted my hand this time. I pulled her up. She didn’t let go of my hand. I didn’t let go either. We walked hand in hand to the drugstore down the street. It was not a conventional first date, but nothing about her was conventional. Laura was unexpected. She was the onion ring in your order of fries.

I showed up for our first date and rang her bell. She answered, looking beautiful. I handed her a small wrapped package. She looked at it questioningly. “Open it,” I said. Inside was a new black little notebook, identical to the one she had written in before.

“I was at the flower shop earlier and I was trying to decide which flowers to get for you when I noticed that the woman who ran the shop was writing down some transactions in a little notebook just like the one you had. I noticed earlier that yours was almost full, so I took it as a sign and decided to get you a new notebook instead.”

“It’s perfect,” she smiled as though I was one of her students and I had passed some sort of test.

“I’ve always liked new notebooks,” I explained, “They are so full of possibilities.”

***

Finally, I arrived at the spot where we first met. Spray painted on the ground was a big heart and the words “I don’t drink coffee.”

It wasn’t the clearest sign but I figured I was supposed to go back to the drug store.

“Hi,” I said to the woman at the checkout counter.

“Hi,” she replied, waiting expectantly for me to buy something.

“Um, do you have anything for me?” I asked awkwardly.

“No,” she replied. But she didn’t look at me like I was crazy which was a good sign. “Why don’t you buy something?” Her eyes darted towards the first aid section.

I hurried over, trying to remember which band-aids we had bought that day. I remembered that they had some sort of animated character on them but couldn’t remember which one. It didn’t matter, because there it was, tucked back behind the boxes of band-aids was her little black notebook.

I caressed the cover and the tears finally came. I missed her so much. We had had six glorious months together, but I had wanted so much more. I had wanted forever. I wanted to know every thought that flitted through her head. I wanted to know every idea that she wrote down. I couldn’t picture her without picturing a little notebook nearby, always at the ready.

She never let me see what was written in them and despite my dying curiosity, I had never peeked. But here it was, left for me to look at.

I wiped my eyes and flipped towards the back of the notebook where she had written on that fateful day.

There, barely legible, were the words, “How to get him to notice me- stop abruptly in the street in front of him and make him bump into me.”